Fox News v. Barack Obama: The War Continues
The verbal brawling between President Barack Obama and the Fox News Channel has gone on longer than Obama’s entire Presidential career. With a truce recently coming about, some may think that their feud is over. However, the media will try to continue to egg this war on until one party cracks. Judging by how the media is slowly backing away from Obama, many predict that the President will crack first.
The conservative Fox News and liberal Barack Obama have clashed since he was campaigning for President. Fox News usually criticized Obama’s viewpoints on health care and resolving the economic crisis, which made the White House believe that Fox News’ goal was to promote anti-Obama advocacy. In return, Obama and his administration gave interviews to other news channels, excluding Fox from any exclusives. To burn Fox News even more so, Senior Obama Advisor David Axelrod publicly declared Fox News, “not a real news network” and tried to smear Fox News’ reputation.
Unfortunately, the Axelrod interview backfired for the Obama administration. Other media outlets started to show their support for Fox News, despite their own liberal views. Anderson Cooper even referred to Barack Obama to Richard Nixon, since Nixon also tried to block certain media outlets from trash-talking him during his reign as President. However, before the media declared a universal backlash against the President, Obama wanted to declare a truce. On October 28, Obama and Fox News officials sat down to talk through their issues with one another.
While this is a good move on both parts, it was a bit unnecessary for Obama to declare a ban on Fox News in the first place. Fox News Channel is only one out of many media news outlets in America, so an opinion of one television channel should not affect the emotions of the leader of the free world. If he imagines his voters looking down upon him solely based on Fox News’ coverage, then they’re in the wrong for not checking in with multiple outlets. His fight with Fox News is making him look bad and giving others the privilege and permission to call him “a socialist, foreign, effete, America-hating Other”, amongst other things. He opened himself up to more criticism, and that is not what he needs after all the scrutiny he faced off with this year.
I’m not entirely sure when (and if) the Fox News/Barack Obama feud will end, but it seems likely that things are bound to get more ugly. Despite the attempt at peace, that will probably not come until either Fox News becomes quiet (which they won’t) or Obama cracks (which seems more likely). Regardless, the media will continue to be all over this war, since it will affect how they perceive Obama. For example, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart already has entertaining coverage of this saga.
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